EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican police have retrieved 10 bodies from an inactive mine just east of Chihuahua City. Investigators suspect four businessmen traveling to set up a slot machine operation in Chihuahua are among the victims.
On Oct. 30, the families of Jesús Román de Santiago Solís, 42; Juan Corral Acuña, 37; Ezequiel Corral Acuña, 36; and Jair Núñez Gandarilla, 40, reported them as missing. They were traveling in a GMC Sierra pickup that police located – abandoned and burned – along the Chihuahua-Parral Highway, the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
“At that point of the investigation, an anonymous call was received regarding the possible location of deceased persons in a mine shaft in the municipality of Aquiles Serdan,” the Attorney General’s Office said.
Officers with the Missing Persons Unit of the Chihuahua state police on Oct. 31 inspected two mine shafts called “La Cueva del Diablo” (Devil’s Cave) and “La Democracia” (Democracy) but found nothing.
It was in a third mine shaft called “La Cueva del Murcielago” (The Bat’s Cave) that the state police found four bodies, the AG’s Office said.
The search continued; police found another two bodies on Nov. 2 and four more on Nov. 3. One of the bodies has been identified as Núñez, while the other nine remain unidentified, Chihuahua authorities said.
Body trauma was the apparent cause of death, but it’s not yet known if the men were beaten to death or suffered fatal injuries as a result of being tossed into the mine shaft, state officials told reporters at a news conference in Chihuahua City on Tuesday.
Th state police, the Chihuahua Civil Protection Office and the Mexican army participated in the search.
Mexican news outlets report this isn’t the first time in recent years bodies are abandoned in mine shafts near Chihuahua City, which is about 220 miles south of El Paso.
A total of 41 bodies have been found since 2019 in Aquiles Serdan, Santo Domingo and San Antonio, El Diario de Chihuahua reported.